Chương 3
Fear.
“What did you do in the Navy, Logan?”
He leaned against the doorframe.
The question he had postponed for almost five years had arrived wearing a strawberry stain.
“I worked in special operations.”
Amelia gave a short, disbelieving laugh.
“You fixed boats.”
“Sometimes.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I let you believe something because I wanted that version of my life to be true.”
Her hand tightened around the phone.
“What kind of special operations?”
Logan did not answer immediately.
Her eyes searched his face as if rearranging every quiet dinner, every nightmare he had dismissed, every time he had chosen a seat facing a restaurant entrance.
“Logan.”
“I was a SEAL.”
The color drained from her face.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
She set the phone down carefully.
“Dominic said you were pretending.”
Logan’s attention narrowed.
“What?”
Amelia froze.
Neither of them moved.
From outside came the ridiculous cheerful music of an ice cream truck rolling somewhere through the neighborhood.
Logan heard every note.
“What did Dominic say I was pretending about?”
Amelia backed toward the hallway.
“I misspoke.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Her phone vibrated in her pocket.
She flinched.
Logan saw the reaction.
So did she.
“Take it out,” he said.
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“I’m not touching you.”
“You’re scaring me.”
“Then walk downstairs.”
She did.
Logan followed at a distance.
In the kitchen, Amelia pulled out her phone.
A message preview glowed across the screen before she turned it away.
Logan caught only four words.
Did he make the call?
Amelia pressed the side button and killed the display.
The sender’s name had been Dominic Vance.
Logan looked at his wife.
She stopped pretending not to understand.
“He told me he needed to know whether you still had contacts,” she said.
Logan felt something colder than the milkshake move through him.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Amelia.”
“I swear I don’t know the whole thing.”
“The whole what?”
Her eyes filled, but her voice came out angry.
“He said if you were really nobody, this could all go away.”
Logan’s hidden phone began ringing upstairs.
Amelia stared toward the ceiling.
Logan already knew only one person had that number.
He went back up, picked up the phone, and answered.
Shaw did not bother with hello.
“Logan, I need you to listen carefully.”
Her voice had lost every trace of humor.
“I ran the sheriff’s name through public federal court records while we were talking.”
Logan closed the bathroom door behind him.
“What did you find?”
“Not him.”
A beat passed.
“Your wife.”
Logan said nothing.
Shaw continued.
“Her name appears in a sealed-case index connected to a federal financial investigation opened eight months ago.”
The hallway floor creaked outside the door.
Logan looked down and saw Amelia’s shadow beneath it.
“Evie.”
“Yes?”
“I think the milkshake was a test.”
“So do I.”
The shadow outside the bathroom did not move.
Then Amelia whispered through the door.
“Logan, please don’t believe everything she tells you.”
Logan opened the bathroom door.
Amelia stood inches away, one hand pressed against the wall and the other wrapped around her phone.
Her eyes were wet, but she was not crying.
“Then tell me what I should believe,” Logan said.
Amelia looked toward the staircase.
“Not here.”
“This is our house.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s private.”
Logan watched her face.
“What did Vance tell you?”
“Keep your voice down.”
“Why?”
She stepped closer and whispered.
“Because I don’t know who’s listening.”
That answer would have sounded theatrical from almost anyone else.
From Amelia, who hated locked doors and once complained that Logan lowered the television during commercials as if he were hiding from satellites, it sounded worse.
He pocketed the old phone.
“Kitchen.”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“Garage.”
Logan followed her downstairs.
Amelia grabbed her coat from the hook beside the back door, then stopped as if she had forgotten why she needed it.
The garage was colder than the house.
Logan closed the interior door but left the overhead door shut.
Amelia walked around the Bronco and stood beside his workbench.
For several seconds, she stared at a socket wrench beside a coffee mug filled with loose bolts.
“You said you were being investigated,” Logan said.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You’re connected to an investigation.”
“I didn’t know there was a federal investigation until six weeks ago.”
“That’s not the same as not being involved.”
She rubbed both palms down the front of her coat.
“I found transfers.”
Logan waited.
“At work.”
“What kind of transfers?”
“Money.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know the total.”
“Try.”
Her mouth tightened.
“More than two million.”
Logan did not move.
The heater above the workbench clicked once and failed to start.
Amelia gave it an irritated look, absurdly familiar in the middle of everything.
“Your heater is broken again.”
“I know.”
“You always say that.”
“Amelia.”
She closed her eyes.
“I handle reconciliations for county accounts.”
“I know what you do.”
“No, you know the version I tell people because nobody wants to hear about spreadsheets.”
A weak laugh escaped her.
It died immediately.
“Most of my job is boring.”
“I believe you.”
“I noticed payments going to three vendors I didn’t recognize.”
“What vendors?”
“One was listed as emergency road maintenance.”
She swallowed.
“One was equipment leasing.”
“The third?”
“Public safety consulting.”
“Real companies?”
“The names are real.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I don’t know.”
Logan leaned against the Bronco’s fender.
“Keep going.”
“The amounts were small at first.”
“How small?”
“Twenty thousand here, thirty-five there.”
“That’s small?”
“In a county budget, enough transactions look ordinary if somebody knows how to bury them.”
“Who approved them?”
Amelia looked at him.
“Dominic.”
There it was.
Not proof.
Not motive.
But a line between the diner and the message on her phone.
“What did you do after you found them?”
“I asked my supervisor.”
“Name?”
“Cal Harris.”
Logan knew him.
May you like
Everyone did.
Harris coached middle-school wrestling, complained about property taxes at the hardware store, and had once spent forty minutes trying to convince Logan that synthetic oil was a corporate scam.
